PDA

View Full Version : Speed



Yanglao
08-21-2000, 02:11 AM
Hey, i was wondering about reflex timing.
I was wondering if anyone knew any good ways of boosting ones reflexes?

J.L.BLACKSTONE
08-21-2000, 06:29 PM
BY NOT THINKING ABOUT THEM.

Robinf
08-21-2000, 06:39 PM
Also, by practice, practice, and more practice. You need to practice so much that it becomes automatic to your body, not your mind. The mind remembers things a lot faster than the body. The body needs the practice no matter how bored the mind becomes with the excerise. Grab some targets, or a partner, and practice.

Switch
08-21-2000, 10:53 PM
I read this post by Scott Sonnon at http://www.amerross.com/bulletin/messages/68/442.html?TuesdayAugust1520000139pm

It has to do with Speed in Throwing, but maybe it's relevant?


SCOTT SONNON:
Speed is a character of movement. [We should change our word choice to acceleration.] Typically we are told that we can increase our "speed" by the following three options:

1. Rehearsal. If you sufficiently repeat a maneuver so many times, you will put it in muscle memory.

2. If you focus upon increasing your overall speed physicality - such as doing sprints, or high rep/low weight training - the desired result being you are just "faster."

3. Work on your explosiveness through strength conditioning, so that you can just overwhelm your opponent by accelerating muscularly beyond his capacity to withstand your attack.

Let me suggest to you an alternative direction (which is a critical paradigm shift for old ****s like me) to view speed as being important only as in so far as it is RELATIVE speed.

It does not matter how fast you are. It only matters how much more quickly you can respond than your opponent can: RELATIVE speed.

1. Firstly, exhale through your maneuvers. Typically most (if not all) athletes inhale before and hold their breath throughout a maneuver, thus dramatically reducing the quality of their movement. Why, you ask? For various reasons, but let's stick to resolutions. The first being the confusion of limit strength and acceleration. Many athletes are trained to retain their breath in strength conditioning in order to magnify their strength, through pneumomuscular reflex of intra-abdominal pressure. Unfortunately, this is NOT what you want in a speed game such as grappling or in the dynamic sphere of a fight.

The optimal performance zone is at the cessation of exhalation, so your exhale should begin WELL in advance of the throw, concluding when you devoid of exhalation. Just try and be graceful while holding your breath (make sure your friends have soft carpet waiting for you to pass unconscious a la Valsalva maneuver.). Your body is highly articulated, and movement is reduced in direct proportion to the volume of your inhalation.

Furthermore, any seasoned fighter will know the instant you are coming, if your throws are inhalation based. He can feel you inhale and grunt... and thus he can thwart your "attempt" easily. He cannot feel your whereabouts when you exhale (at least, not even remotely as acute).

Finally, you cannot accommodate improvisation when you inhale because you cannot feel any change in the relationship, and because your quality of movement has decreased with your inhalation (these two reasons are intertwined, obviously.)

In the old days, this was understood clearly as a "spirit shout." However, with the recent witch-hunt against "traditional martial arts" much of the martial wisdom is being lost for fear of becoming a pariah, which is why today's martial arts community is composed primarily of punks rather than warriors. Regardless, even some of the traditions that are retained in certain circles are pale ghosts of their former ancestors, in particular the "spirit shout." What I hear today is a RITUAL not a performance enhancement method... little timid barks more annoying than a ****zu. I've also heard streetfighters using profanity with such effectiveness that it would impress an old school karateka. You'll hear the spirit shout from combatants on the battlefield, from strongmen performing miraculous feats, from grandmothers lifting cars of babies, from fire rescue personnel charging in burning buildings to save lives, from tribal members recounting their oral tradition with such ferocity that it would have a conventional fighter soiling his trousers.

So what does the spirit shout do?
1. You cannot hold your breath, nor inhale, and shout simultaneously. Remember the optimal performance zone is at the cessation of exhalation... so let's not rehash this point.
2. Noise is information. Too much information causing auditory exclusion in an opponent - a temporary neurological malfunction - an extension of his reactionary gap. Remember, speed does not matter. RELATIVE SPEED matters!

This all being said, most people are not willing to engage this intensity of training... so I always turn people to EXPLOSIVE RESPIRATORY EXERCISES (that were developed solely by the R.O.S.S. Training System) called Dykahniye™. (Read the thread by Dravenhawk entitled ATTN:SSONNON to learn how my breathing methods contributed to his successful performance in his recent fight.) These methods will teach you how to have intense respiratory POWER (such as with the "spirit shout") through exercises and understanding your physiology.

2. I wrote earlier that one of the conventional methods for increasing speed is: Rehearsal. If you sufficiently repeat a maneuver so many times, you will put it in muscle memory.

This is such a waste of time as to be nauseating. Practice does NOT make perfect. PERFECT practice makes perfect.

Furthermore, conventional lunacy also tells us that if we rehearse "techniques" faster, than we will execute them "faster." Why is the concept of technique absent in R.O.S.S. Training System? This issue is one of the reasons why (there are others). If one views a technique as a way to accomplish an objective, then we condition ourselves to rush for the objective; when in fact it is the middle-ground of the technique that counts (furthermore, it is the movement in between techniques that gives us access to fighting skills but this goes to another topic.)

What does this mean? It means train ULTRA-SLOW if you want to be fast. Speed is a character of movement. QUALITY of movement depends upon biomechanical efficiency: how little energy you use to accomplish the goal. If you speed through rehearsing techniques, you do not improve the QUALITY of the movement - you do not see and augment your proficiency. Instead speed rehearsal CONCEALS and worse EMBEDS inefficiency. Ultra-slow training contrarily does the opposite. Do this, and watch your performance sky-rocket!

Ultra-slow training encourages biomechanical, structural and respiratory efficiency through your maneuvers. When this happens, speed UNCONSCIOUSLY increases because of fluidity. Your neuromuscular pathways can be deep, but if they are like a roughly hewn river bed, your abilities are signficantly dampened. Instead your neuromuscular pathway, should be as smooth as a skateboarder's dream pipe, or the belly of an alpine luge. Imagine then how much FASTER you become just because of the surface smoothness of the groove!!!

This leads to the next topic...

3. A Great Throw is LESS energy, but MORE movement! Why is this? We are a system of joints. Joints are like pulleys. The greater the number of pulleys, the less effort required for the work = efficiency. Therefore, the more joints you recruit for movement, the less EFFORT you use in a physical event. This is what it means to be "Biomechanically Efficient." Move more to use less effort. Not EXERT MORE. This is a difficult concept, because people are conditioned to POWER through events. A Great throw is LESS! Protagorus said, "Give me a fulcrum, and I can balance the world." If you FEEL the decisive moment, you need MINISCULE effort to throw your opponent. Yes, good theory, but what about application? Right.

If you FEEL what is occuring instead of trying to IMPOSE technique execution upon him, he is ALWAYS AND ALREADY THROWN! What does that mean? Well, firstly the conventional notion is that we are either in-balance or off-balance. Unfortunately, this is poppycock dribble... throw it on the trash can of obsolete training concepts. Biomechanically, we are perpetually in a state of BALANCING. Even when laying down, we are still balancing (even though a plane is much easier to balance than a cylinder.) Since we are in this whackjob balance act called bipedalism, you can use this to your advantage in combat. How? Because if you understand the biomechanics and structural alignment that result, your opponent is always primed to be thrown (and so are you!), it takes you FEELING where this "moment" is in order to capitalize upon his balancing act.

This is the primary focus of my new video series IMMOVABLE OBJECT UNSTOPPABLE FORCE since this understanding is absent from conventional training, and is one of the single most critical virtues of combative efficacy.

4. FINALLY... Fear-Reactivity. I coined this term as a result of years of training in Combat psychophysiology with the founders of the R.O.S.S. System of performance enhancement: the trainers of the Russian special forces and Olympic teams.

As I have said before, R.O.S.S. is a Method of Somatic Engineering where "State" is composed of the integration of three characteristics: movement (biomechanical efficiency), alignment (structural efficiency), and breathing (respiratory efficiency). If you "attack" (or are attacked in) any one of these characteristics, you dis-integrate "State." When this happens, what manifests are patterns of fear-reactivity: how we are conditioned over a lifetime to respond to fear invoking events (Survival Arousal Syndrome). [Take your knee and drive it into your opponent's diaphragm the next time your are in a knee-on-stomach, and see how many movement and structural mistakes he makes.]

How specifically does this impact on throwing? Well, make him load-bear your weight and his by understanding his structural alignment. This will make him carry the "weight" of responsibility of the fight - which will fatigue him RAPIDLY as he goes into aerobic debt, gassing nearly immediately. Reflexively, he will try to support both your weight and his, while you bouyantly rest. His movement is DRAMATICALLY limited as a result, accompanied by his heavy breathing (poor energy management). This is what happens when someone "shoots" and you sprawl on him correctly, but IMAGINE, just imagine, if you could make him carry that weight all the time. Throwing him is a simple endeavor at this point. To do this, you must understand Joint Mass Center™ - the third installment in the IOUF™ trilogy.

Well, I have tried my best to capture on video this integral training concepts in IOUF™ since they are nowhere to be found outside of R.O.S.S. Training System.